It's kind of funny. I spend pretty much 11 months planning this trip all over Alberta. I started booking things in December and January. Then the pandemic hit, and everything shut down, and we wondered if we would be able to go on our Tour of Alberta. We had to change our plans, and again, and again. But ultimately, this trip I've been planning for the last year ended up being pretty much the only kind of trip we could have done this year. And we pulled it off!
We started our (southern) Alberta tour by heading to Drumheller. After setting up camp,
we visited the big dinosaur
and several other smaller ones,
hung out by the river
and at the playground,
and the kiddos were so excited to set up our tent for the first time,
they promptly all climbed into their sleeping bags.
Sadly, getting them to sleep when it was actually nighttime was not as easy!
We also had to hit up the Royal Tyrell Museum, of course.
When we bought our timed tickets, I was a little worried with how the kiddos would do.
They usually like to rush through the entire museum, and then go back through a second time.
We couldn't do that this time.
So I decided to buy a "Fun Book" to help them focus on finding information and taking their time.
It mostly worked.
After the dinosaur museum, we headed to Dinosaur Provincial Park.
This place was probably our least favorite to camp at. There was large gravel over the entire campsite, tons of mosquitoes that wouldn't leave us alone, even when we had bug spray, a large, loud group just next to us, and it rained quite a bit. Still, we made the best of it.
While it was raining, we sought out slightly drier things to do, like the visitor center and Tyrell Museum Field Station.
It was inside and dry, and also had one of the coolest mounted dinosaurs I've ever seen.
It's a lambeosaurus being attacked by a pack of Dromaeosaurs.
After the visitor's centre, we headed to see the fossil houses. One is an in situ fossil of a duck billed dinosaur, and the other is a replica of a centrosaurus bone bed.
We took the short hike between them through a little bit of badlands,
and on the way back Craig slipped a little and got a bum full of mud.
The badlands are treacherous places in the sun
and rain!
Since it was raining so much, we decided to talk a drive around the area,
although Calista wanted to get out a dance in the pouring rain. She was by far the most willing to get out of the car and look around, while the boys stayed inside.
When weather improved a bit, just she and I walked along this view point looking into the valley,
Pretty impressive, isn't it?
We all did head over to the Cottonwood Flats hike,
which was
not dry as a bone.
As one might expect, there were tons of cottonwood trees, some of the a few hundred years old.
The old ones were massive and scared and absolutely breathtaking in their resilience.
In spite of the rain, we still had a good time and good attitudes.
Most of the time.
The next morning, weather was a little bit better, so on our way out of town,
after some breakfast, we tried out another Badlands hike.
It had dried out enough we could actually do it without falling.
Although we could see some places in the dried mud there people had clearly slipped the day before.
All in all, Dinosaur Provincial Park was good, even if the weather didn't cooperate
And if we didn't get to do the interpretive program I'd really wanted to do so badly. Stupid Covid. Oh well. Onto our next place, which we probably wouldn't have done if it wasn't for the corona virus:
Cypress Hills Provincial Park.
No comments:
Post a Comment